A Veteran's Return

A conversation with Chris Horner about his comeback to racing in March 2012.

Chris Horner, of RadioShack-Nissan, rides in the leader's blue jersey in the 2012 Tirreno-Adriatico, leading Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale), who went on to win the race on the last stage. (Photo courtesy of RadioShack-Nissan)

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Chris Horner, 40, has been racing professionally since 1995. He was born in Japan but grew up in San Diego, where he still resides several months a year when he’s not living at his home in Bend, Oregon, with his wife and three children. Over his long career Horner has ridden for many teams but since 2010 he’s raced with RadioShack. With more than 65 victories on his race résumé, his most notable results are overall wins at the 2011 Tour of California and 2010 Vuelta al Pais Vasco; stage victories in the Tours of Switzerland, Romandie, and DuPont; and 10th place in the 2010 Tour de France.

This week Bicycling caught up with Horner by telephone after the WorldTour race Tirreno-Adriatico, where he finished second overall. It was an important comeback result for Horner, who had been forced to stop racing eight months previously because of injuries he suffered in a terrifying crash on Stage 7 of the 2011 Tour de France.

Bicycling: Chris, you recently finished Tirreno-Adriatico in Italy, but your email said you were in Switzerland. What are you doing there?

Chris Horner: I’m visiting the team doctor because I got a little tendon problem behind the knee that was a bit of an issue during Tirreno, so we’re just trying to heal it up for the Basque Country (Vuelta al Pais Vasco).

Bicycling: Is that something you already talked to the press about? I don’t recall hearing about that.

Horner: Well, the press should’ve noticed it but nobody actually did. I really wasn’t walking good when I came in, when I did the press stuff at Tirreno, after each of the stages. So nobody picked up on it and I didn’t bother saying anything of course—we’re in the middle of the race. There’s no reason to tell everybody that my leg was hurting. [Laughs]

Bicycling: Are you confident that the tendon will heal soon?

Horner: It seems like it. Originally I was to do Catalonia (Volta Ciclista a Catalunya), so I don’t think it’ll heal in time for Catalonia but hopefully it heals soon; it should be a five- or seven-day healing process, so that leaves a good couple of weeks for the Basque Country. It shouldn’t affect the Basque Country, though.

Bicycling: Well, congratulations on second place and excellent riding at Tirreno-Adriatico.

Horner: Thanks. I was quite happy with it, especially after the little leg problem. So I was pretty happy with the results and how it turned out.

Horner crosses the finish line on Stage 7 of the 2011 Tour de France after crashing earlier in the day. (James Startt)

Bicycling: There were sort of two ways to look at it. Some were saying, “Wow, you had a great performance after eight months off and your first race back.” And on the other side I was thinking, “Well, that’s a great result period.”

Horner: Yeah! [Laughs]

Bicycling: Seriously, you were one of the strongest riders. And the team rode really well too.

Horner: That’s the other thing. The points coming from the race bring the team up to the No. 1 rankings. I got some time in the jersey; we got a stage win; we got a lot of UCI points. And now as a whole the team is ranked No. 1 in the world. So there were lots of pluses that came out of Tirreno-Adriatico that make the team very happy and satisfied.

Bicycling: You were out of racing for eight months, but you were eventually able to resume training after your accident in last year’s Tour de France. At what point were you back on the bike doing full-on training?

Horner: About five weeks after July. I think it was the 31st when I went into the hospital for the embolism, and it was five weeks after that when I was able to start training again. So it was more about trying to bring the training up to a really high level, then of course you’ve gotta back off, and bring it up, and back off, and up, and back off. You gotta play with it a bit. You can’t ride two hours a day for eight months, so you still gotta do a few five- and six-hour days here and there to bring the form up. But you gotta rest again because you can’t train hard for six and a half months.

Bicycling: How did the embolism affect you and your training, exactly?

Horner: Well, the embolism is a blot clot, of course, and normally coming from below the waist, so usually it manifests in the leg but it can form in other places too. It’s usually caused by some kind of trauma done to the leg. The blood platelets clog up and then instead of dissolving the way they normally would after the injury starts to heal, these just didn’t dissolve, and traveled up the leg into the lung. And then it blocks the lung so you can’t get fresh blood going into it.

The blood going in will collapse the lung, and once it stops the blood from going into the lung itself, it starts to die because it doesn’t have fresh blood. It’s a painful process, and one you want to be very close to the hospital for if it happens to you.

Bicycling: How confident were you going into Tirreno that you were back up to speed, as it were, that you could put this maybe not completely behind you but that you were healthy and fit enough?

Horner: That’s the beautiful thing about the SRM (power meter). You can be very confident. You don’t actually need the racing to make you confident. Without the SRM it’s a little more difficult to judge how you’re feeling, but with the SRM you’re just watching the numbers and you know they’re off the charts. The numbers in training still translate to the numbers in racing, so you know what your fitness is. It’s pretty accurate.

Of course, you don’t know if you’re going to hold the jersey or if you’re going to be top 10; I mean, it’s not that accurate. Or like, “Wow, you can win this race with these numbers.” But it’s accurate enough to tell you that you can go to the race and you’re gonna be a player.

Bicycling: I have to ask—are you better with the technology now? Last time we met, at the Tour of California, your girlfriend—now your wife—told us you didn’t quite know how to download the SRM files and that she did it for you.

Horner: [Laughs] Yeah, well, she still does that! But I know what it’s telling me when I’m looking at it on the bike—I mean, 400 or 500 watts is 400 or 500 watts. OK, if you’re training well you’re training well. But the SRM can really make it a lot more focused in your training when you know those numbers are competitive. If those numbers are competitive, you look at everything else, like making sure I’m not showing up at the race five pounds overweight, which is easy to do.

Horner: Exactly! You can put on five pounds in very short time. For me, the biggest thing is, when I’m coming into the race, I know I’m competitive before I leave for it. And so of course still in the back of my mind I think, “Will the lung hold up for six hours?”

Sure, I’m competitive when I go out on a training ride, where you ride steady all day and do one test up a mountain and see the numbers, but when I go to a bike race at the level of Tirreno-Adriatico, are you competitive when you gotta go up 10 climbs with the best riders in the world, instead of just two or three that you might do in training? That’s what changes from training to the races.

Bicycling: Is there one key number that you look at on your power meter?

Horner: There is a number, and there is a climb near my house. If I’m pulling over 400 watts up that climb I know that I’m going to be competitive when I leave.

Bicycling: How long is that climb?

Horner: It’s like seven to 10 minutes.

Bicycling: So it’s about sustained power then.

Horner: Yeah, sustained power. I don’t have big power. I’m 145, 140 pounds depending on what time of year—maybe even 138. So I don’t have huge power. All mine is sustained power-to-weight ratio. I don’t do what the sprinters do. Those guys have huge power.

Bicycling: So it’s all relative.

Horner: Yeah, it’s all relative to what you need. For my weight and my size, I know when I go up the last climb, I’d better be capable of 400 watts. If not, I’d better stay home and train some more. [Laughs]

Bicycling: So if back in the day you didn’t have a power meter and you just went by heart rate, you wouldn’t really have had that confidence, would you?

Horner: I didn’t even go by heart rate; I just went by feel. And so you wouldn’t have that confidence. You kinda knew but weren’t 100 percent sure. When I left this time for Tirreno-Adriatico, I emailed Dirk Dimol (RadioShack’s sports director) and said “Hey, Dirk. My form’s really good. I’m coming in very, very good form. So be ready.” [Laughs] But it’s the SRM that allows me to send an email like that. It’s my feelings when I’m looking at those numbers and am capable to do those numbers at the end of my training ride.

Bicycling: How does it work with the team if you say, “Hey, I’m coming in with great fitness and I think I can win”? Do they take that and build a team around you?

Horner: Well, there were three different teams going on that week actually. The two major teams were Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. And Tirreno was set up for the Classics guys getting ready for Milan–San Remo. But those Classics guys are also the guys who can do the team time trial very well because of their power. Dirk showed me the profile of the race and I said, “Hell yeah! I want to do it.” He said, “Great, because we need a GC (general classification) guy.” So the directors talked about it and arranged for me to go to Tirreno and then the other guys for GC at Paris-Nice.

Bicycling: Did you have any anxiety going into Tirreno seeing as it was your first race since July 2011?

Horner: The only fear I had coming into Tirreno was not whether my form would be good in the mountains—it was whether I’d get dropped in the team time trial. [Laughs] If I remember it, it’s eight months since I raced. OK, my numbers are good when I’m climbing up the hill in San Diego, but I’m not doing a team time trial on Cancellara’s wheel!

So you gotta believe there’s a little bit of fear set in me when you’re riding Tirreno and you tell everybody you’re going to have a good ride, but I’ve gotta get through the team time trial in order to have a good ride. And that’s where the team really did a fantastic job. Cancellara did a beautiful job of looking after me in the team time trial so that I wouldn’t get dropped. Theoretically, on paper, if I’d just ridden through and rotated and did my share of the work in the time trial I would have been dropped before the finish.

Bicycling: Based on that, can you explain the team’s objectives for the team-time-trial stage?

Horner: There were two objectives. First, let’s win the team time trial. Second, don’t drop Horner! When we got onto the straightaways and started doing a rotating paceline, Cancellara could see that I was struggling to come through, so he told me to just sit on for that section. I sat on for like 4K and then when we hit the hills I started rotating again. It worked out perfectly, where I’d be stronger to help the team out on the climbs but still not get dropped and still give some benefit to the team.

But it was really Cancellara who said, “Hey, Chris. Sit on right here and we’ll see how it goes.” [Laughs] You gotta remember: He’s going by me quite fast and he leans over to the side and says, “Horner, just sit on!” Now, I have to translate what that means. Of course, at my age and at his level, I know he knows what he’s talking about. He knows I’m gonna understand what he’s talking about. It means, “Horner, sit on. You’re slowing us down and you’re gonna get dropped.” [Laughs]

Bicycling: What’s it like to be on the wheel of Fabian Cancellara?

Horner: Painful. There’s nothing better to my ears than to hear Fabian Cancellara say to me, “Horner, just sit on.” [Laughs] He was pulling so long and so hard. ... The team time trial is pretty ugly but beautiful. Ugly in terms of when you look at my performance but beautiful when you look at how the team tactics played out and how they took care of me.

Bicycling: It’s really impressive and obviously speaks to the depth of the team but also how the team’s cycling IQ plays into protecting you for GC.

Horner: Exactly. I really enjoy racing when you mix the teams up and I get to race with the Classics guys, because I don’t really get to ride with them much. It’s really fun when you get to do those races. And it’s also fun when you’re the GC guy on the team and there’s a little more pressure on you.

Bicycling: Could you explain what happened in Stage 6 in Tirreno when at the finish (eventual overall winner) Vincenzo Nibali sprinted to the line and got second place and, more important, bonus seconds? You didn’t contest the sprint.

Horner: I couldn’t sprint. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. Because of the leg problem, it’s behind the knee, I couldn’t have an upstroke. I couldn’t pull up and I couldn’t sit well. So if you watch the video I’m out of the saddle almost all the time when we’re going uphill because I didn’t have the ability with the left leg to have a back stroke that pulls up. It made it painful to sit in the saddle while we were climbing. I had to do all those climbs out of the saddle. Anywhere there was a bump I was out of the saddle, and I was using the right leg, and that threw the pedal-rhythm stroke off too. Even on long climbs I will normally go 50 percent out of the saddle, but at Tirreno I was going like 80 or 100 percent out of the saddle to protect the knee.

Bicycling: What are your next races and goals for each?

Horner: Well, originally the goal was to do Catalonia and to do the Basque Country and just have the form coming up and up. With the little tendon issue then, hopefully it heals up very fast. If it heals up in the next five days I think the form will be very good at the Basque Country and I’ll be going for the win.

Bicycling: How does it feel to be back racing, Chris?

Horner: Unbelievable. You can’t leave athletes at home on the couch. We just don’t function that way. We go stir crazy. It’s an amazing feeling to be back racing.

Bicycling: So during those eight months, you must have had some difficult times, as I imagine anybody would. How did you deal with them?

Horner: [Laughs] Oh yeah. You go into a black-hole depression. There’s no doubt about it. And the hardest thing is the training actually, because you feel like—by the time I could see the light at the end of the tunnel at Tirreno I’d been training for so long. Like, "There it is; don’t mess this up—there’s the light at the end of the tunnel." So what your mind and your body are saying is, “You’ve already told me this before.” [Laughs] You know? So it gets really difficult to find that next level of motivation to get yourself out of, first, the whole four weeks of being on the couch from the embolism—that’s just a pure depression issue, right there. You’re just miserable.

Horner's Tour crash put him out of racing for eight months, from July 2011 to March 2012. (Eloy Anzola)

Then, to start training and trying to motivate yourself to go out. I mean, I like training, but I don’t like going out and doing 30-hour weeks. It’s fun to go training for 20. When you start doing 30 hours you need to have an objective so that you can understand why you’re putting in that much sacrifice. When I’m doing 30-hour weeks, I’m not going out having drinks with friends; I’m not going to barbecue parties on Saturday nights, standing on my feet for five hours. Those are things you have to give up when you’re still five months out from the season starting, and you’ve got to give those up till your form comes up. Then, once it does, you can take a week and play with the kids. There are about three or four interval periods like that.

Bicycling: You told me you didn’t have time during the week at Tirreno to see any of the Paris-Nice racing, but what do you think of Bradley Wiggins winning the race, one of his biggest wins?

Horner: I think Dauphine is the bigger win. It’s so close to the Tour that I think it’s a bigger win than Paris-Nice. Paris-Nice is definitely a fabulous win, too, but I think the Dauphine would be a bigger win, one that I’d rather have on my resume, and of course he has it on his. It comes right at the time you’re coming into the Tour, too. To win this time of the year is really nice in terms of keeping the team in the spotlight and getting your results so you don’t have to stress later. But I don’t think winning Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico means anything in telling what your Tour de France form will be. I think it has no bearing on your Tour form whatsoever, with the exception that it can take some stress off your contract issues so that you know your value is still good.

Bicycling: This year’s Tour features more than 100 kilometers of time trialing. That should favor defending champion Cadel Evans and Wiggins. Who else do you see as favorites to win the race this year?

Horner: Certainly you have Andy (Schleck). He’s won the (2010) Tour de France now, officially. And if he has the form he had two years ago he can time trial with these guys too, pretty close to them, and he can out-climb all of them. So if you go two years back, through to the Tour and you look how Andy was climbing, there’s not a guy who’s going to be in this year’s Tour de France who can climb with Andy. So the real question fans should be asking is, can Andy arrive at this year’s Tour with the form he had two years ago? If he does, nobody can climb with him. And the small amount of time he lost in the time trials was pretty minor too because his form was so good.

You know Bradley and Cadel are going to be good because there are a lot of time trials. Both those riders are gaining two to four minutes already. That’s a substantial amount of time if you gain four minutes, and it’s possible they can gain more than that on some of the riders. I also know from two years ago that neither one of those two riders climbed with Andy either, period. Nobody climbed with him, except for Alberto (Contador).

Bicycling: The Tour of California is a race you love and won in 2011. Is the Tour of California the biggest goal on your schedule this year?

Horner: It’s certainly the heads-up, everything, give-it-all race. No doubt about it. It’s a fabulous race. They’re putting on the hardest edition they’ve ever had. It’s not necessarily as favorable to me personally as last year’s race was, but I still believe it’s the hardest edition of California that they’ve ever put on. I certainly will miss having stages like Sierra climb in there but I sill believe it’s a harder Tour of California than we’ve faced in previous years.

Bicycling: Chris, thanks for your time and as always we appreciate the insight. Hope you heal up well, and we look forward to seeing you climb well in and out of the saddle.

Horner: Thanks. I appreciate the call and hope to see you in the coming weeks.

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 19, 2012

An earlier version of this interview misstated the year that Andy Schleck officially won the Tour de France (after Alberto Contador received a suspension for a doping offense and lost the title). Schleck won the Tour de France in 2010, not 2011.